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Votes

The computation of presidential election results filed before the elections petition tribunal by the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, shows that all accredited votes cast in 33 states of the federation were shared between him and President Muhammadu Buhari.

Mr Buhari was declared the winner for a second term of four years with 15,191,847 votes to defeat Mr Abubakar who polled 11,262,978 votes. The two got lion share of the 27,324,583 valid votes recorded in the election. Over 1.2 million votes were also voided in the course of the election.

However, excerpts of court filings published by PREMIUM TIMES give Mr Abubakar’s state by state breakdown of votes which, he claims, placed him ahead of Mr Buhari with 18,356,732 against the incumbent’s 16,741,430 votes. The result is exclusive of figures from Rivers State.

The Flaws

Mr Abubakar’s purported result implies that no invalid votes were recorded in the 33 states, and none of the 71 other presidential candidates obtained any score.

In three states; Abia, Bauchi and Cross River, the documents show that the two candidates collectively got votes higher than the number of accredited voters.

Mr Abubakar claims that he obtained the results from the server of the electoral commission, INEC.

The document is included in the petition filed by Mr Abubakar in a suit seeking his declaration as the validly elected president.

The purported result shows that Mr Abubakar defeated the incumbent president by a margin of 1.6 million votes.

The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has dismissed the alleged figures as a product of the opposition’s “hallucination.”

Different result:

Contrary to Mr Abubakar’s computation, INEC’s official result obtained from the electoral commission’s website show that all the 73 candidates who participated in the election scored some votes.

The result showed that 71 other candidates in the election shared the remnants of 869,758 valid votes collated.

The person who came a distant third in the election, Felix Nicholas, of the Peoples Coalition Party (PCP) scored a total of 110,196 votes.

He was followed by Obadiah Mailafia of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) who polled 97.874.

Gbor Terwase of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) clinched the fifth position with 66,851 votes.

Candidates with least scores are Angela Johnson of Alliance for a United Nigeria (AUN) with 1,092, Abah Elaigwu of Change Advocacy Party (CAP) with 1,111 and Edosomwon Johnson of the Nigeria Democratic Congress Party (NDCP) with 1,192 votes.

The Atiku result

In Mr Abubakar’s home state of Adamawa, where INEC officially declared Mr Abubakar winner with 412,266 against Mr Buhari’s 377,488, Mr Abubakar claims that he got 646,080 out of the total 815,680 accredited voters with Mr Buhari scoring 161,600. The result show only the two got all the possible votes.

In Akwa Ibom, Mr Abubakar and Buhari, according to the computation, received all the votes by the 925,370 accredited voters with Mr Abubakar polling 587,431 votes ahead of Mr Buhari’s 337,939.

It is another clean sweep in Enugu as Mr Abubakar claimed that the state’s 965,940 accredited voters gave him 698,119 as against 267,821 for Mr Buhari.

The 1,169,303 voters accredited in Sokoto State, according to the purported result, all shared their votes between Mr Abubakar (552,172) and Mr Buhari (617,131).

The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has in a riposte replied the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP and its Presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, on its reasons for denying the party access to inspect the election materials used during the presidential election.

Recall that PDP had on Saturday accused the commission’s chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu of disobeying the ruling of an Appeal Court, which directed it to allow its candidate, Atiku access to inspect the documents and materials used in the presidential election. The party equally accused INEC of colluding with the All Progressives Congress, APC, to deny its candidates victories which Nigerians have given them.

But reacting to the above allegations, spokesman of INEC chairman, Rotimi Oyekanmi who spoke to Thecable, opined, “It is common knowledge that since the declaration of the results of the presidential election, the commission has been busy with the multiple activities associated with the national assembly, governorship, state houses of assembly and federal capital territory elections. “Only last Thursday, the commission presented certificates of return to senators-elect and house of representatives members-elect, including PDP members. “Nevertheless, the commission will comply when the due process is followed.”

The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Adamawa state has rejected results of the governorship election conducted on Saturday and termed it as “unfair”.

The zonal national vice chairman of the party, Mustapha Salisu, accused officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of ‘colluding’ with the army to alter results accordingreport by TheCable.

Recall that on Sunday INEC had declared the election “inconclusive” considering that the margin between the two top contestants was not as much as the number of votes cancelled across 44 polling units.

Jibrilla Bindow, the incumbent governor and APC candidate had polled 334,995 vote while Ahmadu Fintiri of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) polled 367,471, a margin of 32,476 as against 40,988 cancelled votes.

Mallam Salisu added that the incumbent governor polled more votes in the areas were the election was cancelled, thereby giving the PDP an “unfair advantage” over Bindow.

He said places like Demsa, Song, Lamurde, Numan, Michika and Madagali were largely affected by cases of violence, faulty card readers and over voting at different levels including the polling unit, wards, local government and the state collation centres.

“During the collation exercise, we have itemised the local governments where card readers were not used, where there were over-voting, intimidation of our supporters, and many irregularities,” he said.

“There are petitions we filed and were all serially rejected at the units, wards, the local governments level and to some extent even at the state collation. Our petitions were rejected.

“It is evident that the whole process has been compromised. In view of these anomalies and occurrences, particularly in Demsa Local Government, where proper elections did not take place and our agents were intimidated and harassed from being able to witness the collation; and also in Lamurde, Guyuk and Numan, we said the results announced there are unacceptable.

“So as a party, we reject the results of the governorship election in Adamawa state in its totality and we call for the cancellation of all these places where card readers were not used, and where there was over-voting or extreme violence against our agents.”

In his own reaction, Fintiri called on his supporters to “remain calm as victory is already on their side.”

An Abuja based Civil Societ organization (CSO), the Center for Democracy and Development (CDD) has asked the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to make itself clear on cancellation of elections.

Speaking on behalf of the organization, Idayat Hassan, director of CDD, cited instances of lack of clarity in the national assembly and presidential elections while addressing a press conference in Abuja on Thursday, TheCable Nigeria reports.

She emphasized that the collation of result was “very very sluggish” and in several instances, calculations were wrong with mutilations and various writings on the results sheets.

Hassan urged the commission to tackle logistics challenges that affected the February 23 polls, including delays resulting from late arrival of election materials and personnel as well as the inability of officials to move election results from polling units to the Collation centres due to lack of transportation.

She asked INEC to ensure that election officials use smart card readers nationwide, describing the none use of card readers as a violation of INEC’s guidelines.

“Smart card readers must be made compulsory nationwide rather than in some parts of the country and zero votes must be recorded for all polling units where the SCRs are not used,” Hassan said.

“The patchy use of SCRs further cause voting delays that could affect the smooth conduct of the elections.

“Despite the assurances by the election management body that it was ready to conduct the election on February 23, there were significant delays in the opening of polling units and insufficient materials across the country when voting did get underway on that day.

“More so, Election Day was characterized by localized incidents of voter intimidation, ballot box snatching/destruction and general voter apathy as the national voter turn out rate dipped from 43.7% in 2015 to just 35.6%.”

CDD also condemned the “do-or-die attitude” of the political class who sometimes use thugs to disrupt voting, and asked political parties to educate their agents and supporters on the need to adhere to the code of conduct for smooth conduct of polls and collation of results.

A three-man panel of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal in Abuja has reserved ruling on the ex-parte motion filed by the Peoples Democratic Party and its presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, seeking an order granting them access to inspect the electoral materials used for the February 23 poll.

The three-man panel, in a pre-hearing session of the tribunal on Wednesday, entertained the applicants’ argument for about 45 minutes and rose.

It promised to return in one hour’s time to deliver its ruling.

‎The panel is led by Justice Abdul Aboki, while Justices Peter Ige and Emmanuel Agim are members.

The applicants’ legal team is led by Mr. Livy Ozoukwu (SAN), but Chief Chris Uche (SAN), made submissions on behalf of the team.

As expected in an ex parte hearing, the respondents – President Muhammadu Buhari, the All Progressives Congress and the Independent National Electoral Commission – were absent and not represented by their lawyers.

Uche said during the Wednesday’s hearing that the ex parte motion contained six prayers, one of which sought the tribunal’s leave to bring the motion up in the tribunal pre-hearing session.

He added, “Prayers 2 to 6 are in summary seeking orders of this honourable court to allow the inspection and production of election documents used by the Independent Electoral Commission for the conduct of the presidential election to enable the applicants to institute and maintain an election petition.”

But during the proceedings, members of the panel expressed reservations‎ about whether the tribunal could grant some prayers contained in the application for orders allowing them to scan and photocopy electoral materials as well as allow them to conduct forensic examination and forensic audit of the materials.

Responding, Uche insisted that there were authorities of the Court of Appeal ‎which had interpreted section 155 of the Electoral Act to mean that petitioners could be granted all the prayers sought in the ex parte application.

While rising to prepare the tribunal’s ruling, Justice Aboki, requested the applicants’ legal team to submit the said authorities within the one hour period the panel gave to finish writing the ruling.